The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) canceled a $600,000 grant to Southern University A&M featured in a database of woke government spending. Conservative media reported its purpose was to study “menstrual cycles in transgender men.” But the real story is far more complicated.

New Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced on Friday, “CANCELLED: $600,000 grant to study ‘menstrual cycles in transgender men.’ Keep sending us tips. THANK YOU, @approject! The insanity is ending and the restoration of America is underway.”

Rollins’s tweet referenced the American Principles Project (APP) which has compiled a database of “Funding Insanity: Federal Spending on Gender Ideology under Biden-Harris.” According to one entry in that database, “The USDA Obligated $600,000 In Grants To Southern University A&M To Study Menstrual Cycles In ‘Transgender Men And People With Masculine Gender Identities, Intersex, And Non-Binary Persons.’”

The College Fix reported this grant on Thursday, followed (after Rollins’s announcement) by Fox News and Todayville. All three articles characterized the grant as a sum of money “for the study of menstrual cycles in transgender men” or substantially similar language.

But the full grant application, found on USASpending.gov with a brief online search, tells quite a different story. The widely quoted line about “transgender men” — that is, trans-identifying women — is found in the introductory section of the project description. Even here, it fits awkwardly and seems shoehorned in as an afterthought:

“A woman will have a monthly menstrual cycle for about 40 years of her life averaging to about 450 periods over the course of her lifetime (Nappi, et al, 2016). It is also important to recognize that transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons may also menstruate (Weiselberg 2022). At any given moment about 26% of the world’s population is menstruating (Barrington et al. 2021).”

The best explanation for the insertion of this language is the start date of the three-year grant: April 15, 2024. To win an award from the Biden administration, with its whole-of-government approach to observing transgender ideology, it seems that Southern University A&M felt obligated to insert this irrelevant line to satisfy the president’s preoccupation with trans activism.

“The Biden Administration’s obsession with advancing a transgender agenda was obvious to grant seekers, since an otherwise normal grant proposal included discussion of ‘trans men,’” Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon told TWS. If anything, mentioning “the menstrual cycles of trans men acknowledges that they are, in fact, women,” she added.

Further down, the project description described its purpose, which was “to address … the potential health risks posed to users of synthetic feminine hygiene products (FHP, advancing research in the development of FHP that use natural materials, as well as providing menstrual hygiene management (MHM) education for young women and girls.” It made no further mention of “transgender men.”

The project description proceeded to articulate six “specific objectives”:

“A) to produce three natural fibers; regenerative cotton, regenerative wool and industrial hemp (cannabis sativa);

“B) to develop patents for sustainable feminine hygiene sanitary products using the three natural fibers;

“C) to evaluate the FHP made from each of the natural fibers in comparison to the standard synthetic product;

“D) to educate young women and girls about MHM through an extension program;

“E) to enhance instruction for students in the college of agricultural, family and consumer sciences and

“F) to provide a local fiber processing center for fiber growers in Louisiana.”

From these objectives, it seems evident that the core of this project involves developing natural fiber alternatives to synthetic feminine hygiene products. There are other controversial elements of the project, such as its proposal to grow “industrial hemp (cannabis sativa),” the same species from which marijuana is made, and to develop local processing infrastructure for this product, near Southern University A&M, in Baton Rouge, La.

Nor does it follow that this project should have received a USDA grant through the “Capacity Building Grants (CBG) Program” to 1890 land-grant institutions (historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs), as described on the award page. The USDA website stipulates that “Applications submitted to CBG must address at least one of the following NIFA [National Institute of Food and Agriculture] strategic goals: sustainable bioenergy; food security; childhood obesity prevention; or food safety.” From the award description, it’s not clear how this project addresses any of these four goals.

But to call the project a study of menstruation in “transgender men” misleads readers to imagine something like a medical trial focused on the feminine cycles of females who actively deny their womanhood.

There are other rationales for canceling government grants based on a proposal’s improper recognition of transgender ideology — arguments that require a bit more nuance.

For instance, the cancellation of pro-transgender grants sends a signal that the Trump administration is reversing the Biden administration’s embrace of transgender ideology. Under the Biden administration, grant applicants like Southern University A&M felt pressure to insert transgender ideology wherever possible. Under the Trump administration, grant applicants had better leave that nonsense at home.

In response to a request for comment, APP made a similar point. “Gender ideology has infiltrated the federal government, and we are on a mission to root it out,” APP Communications Director Cailey Myers told TWS. “This grant clearly denies biological reality — men don’t menstruate. Federal grants should not be funded if they support this preposterous notion; it’s disqualifying in and of itself.”

“When Southern University agrees that there are only two sexes, male and female, and that men cannot menstruate, we’d be happy to push for the Department of Agriculture to reinstate their funding for this grant,” Myers added.

The controversy over this $600,000 grant is part of a larger drama over whether the U.S. federal government — and American culture writ large — will recognize biological reality, or whether it will become captured by a destructive ideology. “Let’s hope that President Trump’s insistence on reaffirming the two sexes, male and female, is successful,” Kilgannon concluded.